


She was Hers and He was mine

by Anam_Writes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Claude's wyvern - Freeform, Dissociation, F/M, Gore, Intrigue, Marital Issues, Mental Health Issues, Morning After, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Political Alliances, Post-Time Skip, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, References to Sex, Rivalry, Smut, Tags Contain Spoilers, Thriller, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Violence, fitting in fluff wherever I can, warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:35:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: Byleth and Claude balance their marriage, grief, and an increasingly dangerous political disagreement.…Byleth always felt a bit of a comfort looking up at the archer in the stars. Claude was a good shot. He never missed a target when it counted. And she counted.She counted days. She counted nights. She counted troops and supplies as the remnants of the Imperial army and the Agarthans closed in. She counted the promises he made her on paper and weighed them against the warnings she counted amongst her advisors.She helped Claude account for what she had made hers in his absence. Then he swept her away to Garreg Mach to plan a wedding. And in a night all that was his was counted as her own; all that was hers was his.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth & Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 56
Kudos: 85





	1. to her husband, the King

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! Finally out! And it's my first multi-chapter plotted out story. So excited!
> 
> And also, thank you to evil_bunny_king for being my beta! Yes, also the first time I've had a beta. And they're excellent. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy!

She did not know this woman who spent her days sitting and speaking. She did not know her when she floated down the halls of a palace, robes of white and green and gold trailing behind her. She did not recognize her when she walked past mirrors and stared into her own eyes there like she was seeing a spectre of a lost queen. She did not know her when she nestled in blankets in the quiet, doing nothing, legs wrapped in tan pants and nested in her husband's wide white tunic. 

The husband was something familiar. He reminded her of a boy with sharp eyes and a smile tapered at both ends. He reminded her of a child she'd heard stories of from that boy, who walked alone in desert sands looking up to the stars to measure the breadth of his dreams. He looked like the man she'd seen on a battlefield jump from an albino wyvern after his bow snapped in his hands. He had fallen atop the man barrelling after her and strangled him, pushing his head into the mud of the field. Even with the thunder of feet and clash of metal she could hear the collapse of the soldiers windpipe.  
But the stranger's husband could not be that man. 

This man went silently by her. He perched himself in window nooks and watched her sit staring mournfully into the fire. He wore soft shirts and made not a sound when his wife took them. He did not smile with barbed teeth, or walk alone in the sand. And he did not hold her the way that man had, the blood of her enemies still staining his skin. 

These were silent strangers. They fell into the depths of peacetime and lost themselves in it's maze. They did not know who they were or who they shared their bed with when the dust settled. In war and trouble they had been born and now in serenity they trod on like the enchanted dead in graves at night. 

"Byleth," said the husband. 

It had been so long since he spoke it she had nearly forgotten the stranger shared her name.  
Byleth rolled onto her other side. In the dark she could barely see the man's shape. His chest expanded with breath held, though she could not hear. He was turned to her as she was to him, a fair linen shirt obscuring the width of him, just as she hid her form beneath a matching chemise. 

"Let's move court for the summer," he said. "There's a hunting lodge on the edge of the Throat that will do."

He did not ask. He did not phrase himself in questions anymore. She did not blame him.  
When he came to her to ask all he got was distant stares and thoughtless hums from her lips. 

"Ask Seteth," she told him. 

Seteth would know, as he always did, whether it could be done. For a year and a half he knew, regardless of all else that clouded her judgement - desire, grief, dread - what could and must be done. 

"I have," he says. "It's been a year since our wedding and he agrees the state of affairs is well enough that we may take our honeymoon."

Byleth is silent. 

"If you do not wish-"

"No," Byleth turns back from him. This is how she is most comfortable, hand on the dagger beneath her pillow, back turned to the King and eyes set firmly to the door. "We will go."

Claude says nothing. She expects to hear the rustle of sheets, feel the weight shift on the mattress as he turns onto his back. He does not snore when he lies on his back. 

(She knew a boy once who slumbered on his back because he liked to fall asleep beneath stars. She used to share a tent with him when they toured Fódlan at war. He used to draw lines with his fingers when he brought back the flap at the roof and show her shapes she hadn't thought of in the sky.)

Instead she feels a hand come to rest at her hip. 

He draws her body into him, slowly, gently. Once she feels the whole of his arm encircle her waist and his heartbeat thud against her back, once his breath warms her neck and his leg slips between her own to tangle with hers, she closes her eyes. She wants to ask him to back away. She wants to tell him how it pains her when his heart beats like a hammer on her spine and how his breath startles her as it comes hot and uneven onto her skin and how her thigh cramps beneath the weight of his leg. 

Then she remembers how good it felt when a man had loved her under a canopy of stars, in tall golden grass.

So she stays still. She breathes. Her breath is the only comfort she can give when he holds her. For she is all corpse in his arms otherwise: no movement, noise, heartbeat or warmth to tell him she's still alive.

But that breath is all she may give him

"I'm tired," she says.

And his head pulls back from the curve of her throat and his leg dislodges from between her own.

"You're tired," he repeats, a reminder to himself. Flat and empty of any malice or sympathy, anything bitter or sweet. Simply a fact he must state to pull himself back to his corner of the mattress. 

Then she feels the familiar weight shift that tells her he has rolled onto his back. Then the rhythmic song of his breath begins like a lullaby.  
He falls asleep so quickly these nights; there are no stars to look up at. 

...

She made a man named Claude her King on a day like this. The sky held above on the peaks of the Throat's mountains, blue and bright. She'd begged him to fly her through the sky when guests collapsed with bliss and fatigue and drink. 

Claude had brought her to the stable. Though they both walked askance from wine, he took her to see Magali. She was a great, white wyvern with a proud head that never lowered. 

He would not take her to fly but he stripped his coat from his back and made a bed of hay to rest in with the cloth to protect her from the scratching of it. He released Magali from her stall into the brisk night air. 

She flew above them as they reclined in the hay and Byleth asked him if it was alright for her to fly off without a rider. 

"We don't train wyverns in Almyra," he said. "We trust them and they trust us. She'll return when she's ready because we're family."

"What if she stopped trusting you?" Byleth asked. 

Claude turned his head to face her, smiling. "She'd come back to kill me."

Today Magali circled them in the sky as they rode the last stretches to the lodge on horseback. A sparse escort of Goneril knights flanked them but, besides that, they were alone.

Her husband had suggested moving court. She imagined an entourage would come: officials, scribes, a messenger, perhaps the captain of the crown-guard. But besides the escort they received from each territory they passed, there was no one.

She said nothing to him and he did not ask after her comfort with it.

She looked up to Magali, a pearl floating through the endless blue. 

She would stay if Magali could. 

"There's kitchen staff at the lodge but otherwise we'll have our privacy," her husband says. 

Byleth watches him watching her.

"I had the library well stocked. It's small but I'm sure there'll be plenty of material to get you through the days." 

Magali calls above. It is the long, low sound she makes when the way is clear. 

He looks up now. His eyes light. 

"I'll take you flying whenever you want, so long as the weather's clear," he says. 

She flew once. She taught others to fly as high. Or maybe it was an old friend’s dream. 

"Can we fly Magali?" She asks. 

The husband's eyes come back down, fire burning behind green, a distant fire in a forest spotted by a traveler passing through. His eyes give her the hope of warmth. Byleth becomes a word that means something and her husband melts away somewhere along the border of what is now and what has been.

"Magali would love that," he says. "She's missed you."

...

There is much to be done when a court is moved. She has done it before, she thinks. When the nation was more fragile and as they meant to establish a united front. No more could the King rule from the south-east and the Queen from north-central coast. So they wintered in the Almyran capital and summered in Derdriu. 

“They’ll never accept a divided authority,” her husband said. 

But neither would the Almyran people and their leaders acknowledge a God-Queen. 

And so when the modest staff equipping the lodge call her princess as they refuse to let her near her things, she bristles. But they do not call her mistress anymore, which improves her mood greatly.

“It’s just the more exact translation for the consort to the King,” her husband had told her when she’d felt afoul. “I’ll let them know it is not appropriate. They’ll address you as princess-consort or not at all.”

She’d not been princess-consort before they wed. Curious how he had been promoted in Fódlan when he took her hand and she demoted in his country. It was a bitter kind of envy that struck her. It festered there long before she could truly cleanse the wound. When she did, it was an arduous task. Her husband had found the study amess and Byleth weeping, her banner bearing her crest clutched close to Byleth’s breast. 

All else had been struck from the tablet in her mind. 

Even as consort across the border, Byleth did not expect her role so lessened. Moving court was an intricate dance of labour, delegation, arithmetic and a steady political hand. But the servants shoo her as she tries any such thing. 

“It’s our honeymoon,” her husband chuckles. “You’ll not lift a finger for as long as we’re here.”

It is indignant. 

“Forgive my breach of etiquette, husband,” she looks to her hands that she folds prettily in front of her. “I will endeavour to do as little as you wish of me.”

She is demure and smiling as he shows her about the lodge - which Byleth's days as a mercenary declare is less a lodge and more a villa - and this, coupled with her deferential answer hurts her husband more than anything else she could have done. She knows because he does not speak to her for the rest of the day. 

When next they talk it is at dawn as she catches him leaving for a morning ride. 

“Excuse me,” he says as he passes her. “I’ll be back by tea time.”

He is. 

When he joins her in the garden - Almyran Pine plucked freshly by Byleth and brewed as an experiment - he makes no mention of her subservient insults. He is panting as he always is when he arrives for tea. His eyes marked with red, angry branches in the corner and his cheeks are puffy and pink. 

“It is the chill, my love,” he tells her. 

She pretends to believe him. 

“It earned me respite, even if for just a day,” she tells the fire when she is reading alone in a lounge that afternoon. The flame seems incessant in its annoyance with her regardless. “I did what I must.”

Byleth pretends to believe that too. 

...

Bernadetta's death was not something Byleth would wish on anyone. 

She had ordered Claude fly around the ballista as bait. When she aimed at Magali Byleth came from behind her. She planted steel into the girl's side, watched her fall to the ground, bleeding, silent, eyes dull, head lolling. Dead, she thought. Dead. 

Byleth had left her on the hill when the fire was lit by the imperials. She scrambled to get any who followed her up the hill to the ballista away from the flames. 

It was only when she went back over Gronder field to assess the damage that she saw Bernedetta's charred remains, mouth gaping open and face frozen black in perpetual fear. 

It was just like her to play dead. 

It must be Bernedetta now possessing her with such rampant fear, such paranoia, that she cannot leave her room. Who else could it be? It is surely not herself.

It does not feel like herself.

Byleth should have cut her throat after the kill, just as Father had taught her. Instead the sweet little mouse was burned alive by her allies as she slowly bled out. 

And Byleth sat in her room a few days now, meals brought by servants that whispered about her and pitied by her husband. When he spoke to her it was softly, cooing in her ear. 

Starlight, dearheart, my sweet. 

"Friend," he sighed once, standing in the doorway, mourning her as she lived. 

It was just familiar enough for her to ask that he leave.

This morning she could take no more. No more whispering walls practiced in foreign tongues and husbands with honeyed words trying to coax her from her bed. 

He was out with Magali now, as he had been every day until noon for the last week. She had grown agitated since their arrival, she'd struck a groom with her tail and bucked a trainer on takeoff. Claude was the only one she'd allow near her of late. And so all the daily duties a wyvern presented - cleaning, grooming, exercising - fell to him.

She was happy for him that his honey words reached someone. 

She would not run any risk of seeing him in the halls were she to leave now. And so now is the time she takes.

She pads out from the room in an oversized white shirt that smells of Claude's scent and her husband's cologne. 

The house is well and truly empty save for the kitchens, just as he had promised. And so Byleth moves undisturbed by staff or courtiers, or any she might usually find to intercept her.

Down the hall she opens the heavy oak door that creaks dreadfully when it moves. Byleth thinks it is tactical, to warn the sleeping royals who spent their nights here of everyone who passes through. 

To warn the royals now of any comings and goings. 

Down the stairs she goes. Down and then east, as he showed her. Down the next hall then to the left. There lies the study, humble before her.

It was neat when her husband first walked her through it. Every book shelved in place, every blank parchment hidden from view. Now she sees that the wind has swept through it (as he's wont to do) and muddled the place. 

Maps - some rolled, others lying flat or curved at the edges - litter the floor. Notes written in hurried Almyran and even messier Fódlanese fly everywhere. A shuffled pile lays on the desk while another trail leads to the chaise. He has pinned a few to the wall with tacks, broken arrow heads, one a butter knife. His chair is not behind his desk but rather pulled out and lying on its side by the fireplace. And books, they are everywhere. Piled by the unlit ash pit, on the desk, strewn across the chaise, on the window sill. 

Byleth groans. 

They'd not lift a finger on their honeymoon. Was that what he had said? Or had it been something vaguely along those lines? She couldn't recall.

It mattered little. 

The mess before her was very Claude. And, seeing as that was the case, she could hardly see a scenario where cleaning would do anything but frazzle him. 

"It's my mess," he told her once, long before they were wed, as they drank wine and celebrated a hard won victory in battle. "I can see everything better like that, all out in the open. I can tell where it all is and that's what matters."

Rather than worry over the sight, Byleth steps carefully round the maps of the continents and past the desk to the book shelves. They are modestly stocked with Fódlani tales of knights and honour, history of Fódlan, then of Almyra. Byleth's eyes skim one book in particular, the binding reading in clear Almyran. At the top corner there stands the constellation of an archer Claude had shown her (on a summer night with fair weather) that always pointed west.

"At the target," he told her.

Byleth always felt a bit of a comfort looking up at the archer in the stars. Claude was a good shot. He never missed a target when it counted. And she counted.

She counted days. She counted nights. She counted troops and supplies as the remnants of the Imperial army and the Agarthans closed in. She counted the promises he made her on paper and weighed them against the warnings she counted amongst her advisors. 

"Flee," Seteth had said. "If the city should fall you must live on."

But she did not. 

She counted the wyverns shadows above the clouds. She counted their riders as they swooped onto the battlefield, grabbing at the enemy. She counted the bodies that fell from the sky, opened up by talons. The screams of the living who were not done such kindness made a chorus in the air, falling from wyvern claws to their death. 

She counted the dead, counted their pyres. 

She helped Claude account for what she had made hers in his absence. Then he swept her away to Garreg Mach to plan a wedding. And in a night all that was his was counted as her own; all that was hers was his. 

And she, too, was counted amongst his war prizes. 

Princess. 

The book is in Byleth's hands and the sun is a little higher in the sky by the time her mind quiets. There is an ache behind her eyes that makes it harder to filter through the words and images this book and it's cover bring forth from her. 

A book she can't read set to make her cry; oh, there was a time she would have relished that joke. 

She drops it with the rest into the mess. She expects to leave it there. To have that west-bound arrow forgotten by midday and the ache in her head subsided soon after. Instead her eyes draw back to it, to an envelope flung from it. 

It is addressed to her husband.

...

She has been between fits of pacing and reading all day. When she reads she clutches the letter close to her face and rocks back and forth on the corner of the bed. 

When she paces her feet hit heavier on the ground than she would like. She tries not to mumble to herself, not to scream or to grab at her hair and pull. 

She tries to distract herself, watching the sun rise and then fall. She distracts herself with changing into her night gown, with brushing out her hair, with composing in her mind a reasonable response. But how could she conduct herself reasonably in the face of this?

"His Royal Highness, King of Almyra and King of Fódlan, Claude von Riegan Al-Kir," the address is to her husband clear as day. And it is Seteth's scrawl that rolls along the page. "As per your request the council has taken into consideration your investigation into Her Majesty's health and has, indeed, come to the conclusion that action must be taken towards the Queen's wellness. As such, your leave has been approved for the duration of the summer and we will be making the following arrangements to be carried out upon your Majesties' return:

"General Nader will take on matters of military import. The newly appointed Lord Goneril will see to safe border relations to the east. Ser Lorenz Hellman Gloucester has volunteered his services in matters of finance. Master Cyril…"

It goes on and on. All matters of state that had fallen to her, which she had gone about her business with before her husband ever flew down into Derdriu with his wyverns and horsemen, were gone. Not a single thing remained to her but the crown that sat upon her head begging deference for such a vague role as Queen and Princess without access to her army, her border, her coffers or anything else. 

And worse, the plot wreaks of him. Seizing power from a ruler under the guise of some unspecified risks to her health. The only thing it lacked was a mild stomach poison. But that might yet appear too. 

She hears the door in the hall before she can hear him. She sees the dark before she can pull herself from the lettering of Seteth's fine hand. 

Pulse pounding painfully in her hand, thudding against parchment, she shakes. She grasps the letter in her fist and lays as she always does, paper in place of her dagger now. 

Then there it is; the click of his riding boots on the floor. It's the tip tap of a careful heel, toe, heel, toe trying, in kindness, not to wake her. 

The bed shifts when he sits on it. He sighs. 

Byleth feels ill as he strips himself of his finery. She cannot see but she feels him in the shifting of the mattress and the aching awareness at her back. She feels him in the paper against her fingers, tucked away beneath her pillow. She gulps. 

Her husband lets out a groan as he lies back down on the bed. Byleth waits, searching for the rhythm of sleep in his breath. But it does not come. 

She feels the dry urgency of the parchment still beneath her. The swell of panic in her gut moves her to turn, to look over her shoulder at her husband, see if he might be tired enough to not see her slip the letter out from under her and between the bed frame and the mattress. 

When she turns, it is not her husband she sees. 

Lying there, scowling at the ceiling, daring it to erupt back at the heat of his stare was Claude. He had grown into her husband's form from sheer force of will. Or perhaps he had always been him, waiting for her to see.

Suddenly the paper beneath her pillow did not feel so threatening. 

She knew this man she had married: he was enacting a scheme. 

When had he ever schemed to her detriment?

Byleth falls back into place, head upon her pillow. She slips her hand out from the letter's hiding place and curls around herself. 

"Claude," she says. 

There comes no answer but she knows he has heard her. Even in her muted tones, the word it had been so long since she'd uttered must be loud enough to reach him. 

"I'm cold," she tells him. 

Another second passes before he kicks his feet over the bed. "I'll get an extra blanket."

"But I'm cold, Claude," she tells him. 

He does not stand to get the blanket and he does not lay back down. 

She rolls her body over. His back is a tall, broad silhouette against the blur of their room in the dark. She hears a deep breath, sees his ribs expand and deflate beneath his chiffon. 

"It can get chilly up in the mountains," he says. 

Byleth remains as silent as he does still. 

"Maybe I should have brought you somewhere warmer," he mumbles to his lap. "I just thought…"

Outside Magali sings on the other side of a mountain’s peak and they can hear it now as though it were a harmonic whisper between them in the bed. As the chorus of wild song rises Claude looks back over his shoulder. 

"You're saying you want me to keep you warm," he says. 

Byleth gulps, nods; though it wasn't a question. 

Claude settles back into the bed beside her, closer this time. "Like this?"

Her eyes fall to empty sheets between them. "No."

He comes closer still. One arm drapes over her hip and his hand rubs up and down her back, dragging her cotton chemise over her skin in a way that's only mildly itchy. "This?"

Her eyes meet his. Claude's expression changes when they do. She's unsure how to qualify it but it's undoubtedly there. 

"Not this then," he says. "It's warmer, though."

She nods; it still wasn't a question. 

The tips of his fingers walk a trail up her side. She thinks for a moment he will grab at her, or squeeze her and laugh, just as he used to. His hand kept going up, up, up her, until his fingers paddled at her neck. 

"Warmer," he says. 

Her husband will squeeze. He will grab. He jumped from the back of that charming white wyvern and choked a man to death in the mud of Gronder field. Now he jumps from his pedestal - husband, lover, friend - she has afforded and will strangle her amongst silk and fur. 

Why would he not? He wanted her dead.

Byleth laughed; butterflies fluttering about her lungs rather than her stomach and coming out in song. 

Claude smiled. And yes, of course he did. Of course Claude smiled because he always did when she laughed. Even when he was the target of her wicked humour. 

"Something funny?" Claude asks.

He kisses her, branding his smile on her lips. 

"I'm such a fool," she tells him. 

He pulls her closer still. Her body contours his own. 

How silly for her not to remember him as he stayed close beside her. They were all the same: that stranger, that husband, that boy breathing starlight beneath clear desert skies. And how could she banish the beast from their home? It was the one she liked so well with two backs, one heart, connected at the centre and it thrived from two mouths that drank sweet words and feasted on kisses. 

"Don't speak ill of the Queen," Claude says. "Her King might hear you."

"And where would we be then?" she asks. 

"Where indeed." 

He kisses her again and it is slow. She savours lips she can't recall the touch of. She falls into patterns now ancient etched into her body. He does not pry her open, or slip his tongue along her lip. He does not tease, or prod or cling. His thumb rubs circles behind her ear and his hands still laze at her neck. 

She grasps his fingers like they are delicate, though his hand is agile and tougher than even hers from years on the bow. 

"I'm cold," she whispers against his lips. 

He drags his hand from hers and it travels to her shoulder. 

"Warmer?" He asks.

She brightens under his touch. "Yes."

He hooks a finger under the neckline. "Warmer?"

"Yes."

…

Byleth wakes in his arms. They wrap around her, loose as well kept ivy up a chapel wall. All the same she can still feel the warmth without the pressure, the strength at his command without the use of it. 

When she comes in closer to kiss the junction of his shoulder and collar she can feel tight skin, and beneath it archer's muscles, then beneath that the steady thud of a pulse. 

She pulls back to look at him: ajar mouth, deep and even breath, rapid shifting of his eyes under his lids. She might have thought he was asleep. She knows better though; he always snores when he sleeps on his side. 

Her fingers paint lines up his arm until they reach his hair. She combs them through and sets another kiss to his cheek. Then to the corner of his mouth. She takes his bottom lip between her own and sucks gently on it to coax him out. 

When she pulls back again her eyes are met with thick, moist green. It brings to mind the depths of the sea past the shallows where Derdriu stands. 

"Warm?" He asks. He speaks as though through a layer of gravel coating his throat. 

She smiles. "Yes."

He kisses her and it is more daring than before. Not a question being asked between them, not a repetition of what she gives. It is a statement. A statement he holds between his teeth as he nips her lip and shared with his clever tongue in her mouth. It's a statement he presses into her needily. 

She pulls back for air before she drowns in it. 

"I love you," he gives his declaration voice. It is coarse and wanton between them and makes Byleth squirm against him. "Tell me you know that."

"I do," she tells him as he dives into her neck, all teeth and tongue and desperation. "I know."

She thinks he will topple her over and grind her down into powder on their sheets between his mouth on her and his hands seering into her hips and rough voice in her ear.

But Claude brings himself back, face flushed, smile wide, eyes gleaming. Laughter comes gleeful and airy from his lungs. 

"Remember," he instructs, pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead and retreating from their bed. 

Byleth gathers the blanket around her, suddenly very cold with empty space at her side. She shimmies quickly to his side of the bed, sitting on the edge all wrapped in fine fur and silk. 

He is bare as he shuffles about the room, gathering up discarded trousers and then a fresh shirt and jacket from their wardrobe. As he dresses he looks back her way with a wink. 

"I won't be gone too long," he tells her. "And I can keep you warm as long as you want when I get back." 

"Where are you going?" She asks. 

She tries not to but from the satisfaction that crosses him she knows she is pouting. Or at least, she wears her version of a pout. 

"Magali's still out of sorts," he reminds her. "She needs riding." 

"I need riding," she counters. 

He sputters through another laugh, less airy as the morning finds him more awake. There's a certain spring in his step, a joviality he's been missing a while. 

"Don't be jealous of a gecko with wings," he tells her. 

He is fully clothed, his boots on, his jacket wrapped around his torso (a stunning adherence to his shape if she had ever seen one) and his hair only a little muddled. He slips on the pair of riding gloves that match the ones he'd commissioned for her birthday last year. On the trim is an engraving of lilies in her honour entwined with his favourite sunflowers. 

Byleth worries at her lip. "Be safe."

Claude waves a hand in the air dismissively. "We'll be fine."

He is reaching for the door's handle when she whispers quietly, "I love you."

He turns and the room falls silent. His hand is on the handle, his gaze wide and on her. He crosses the room in three steps and his lips are on hers before she has time to think. 

Byleth thinks, for a moment, that she has won a great victory. That despite his judgement (his boundless amount of judgement) and the outside beckoning, he is hers. That she has called and he has come and he will not spare his morning for worldly demands. 

But he breaks from her, though it is reluctant. And those damp green eyes are filled now with salt too. She thinks it is a trick of the light at first but no. There is water there not from waking. He blinks it away and clears his throat. 

"The sooner I leave the sooner I'm back," he says, pressing his forehead to hers.

"Go then," Byleth sighs. 

Claude is more eager in his step than even before and leaves the room with a chuckle and a word she didn't quite catch mouthed quickly her way. 

She lies back into the sheets, well and truly cold. Her skin is pin pricked, naked against cold mountain air, however insulated it is by the well kept villa. 

Maybe she should call for breakfast. Maybe call for pine needles to cut for tea. Byleth takes a deep breath.

Maybe she should read over that letter one more time. 

She had worked herself into a state over it but perhaps there was an explanation: something she missed in her frantic skimming or something Claude was privy to that she was not. She had to read it once more, slowly, carefully. 

Then they could talk. Talking had always worked before when they were hunched over maps and beaten and broken after battles hard fought. Talking worked. 

Byleth rolls over, lying on her stomach and reaching her hand beneath her pillow on the other side of the bed. She feels only silk there. 

Her brow knits but she takes another breath and sits up. She lifts the pillow this time. But still, only ivory silk awaits her. 

Byleth feels the pulse in her hands rising again but she shakes them loose of panic's grip and checks the floor beside the bed. Then the floor beneath. She runs her hands under the mattress and between the bed frame. She flips the mattress. 

The letter is gone.


	2. from a goddess, the Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me," he whispers husky in her ear. "Has the Queen come for a pleasure ride?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actually managed to write the sex scene this time. My ace-spec self is finnicky and easily distracted. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. No beta this time around because I'm dumb and reckless but I encourage you to still check out my lovely usual-beta for the piece [evil_bunny_king](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king).

“Can she hear us?” Claude asked her. 

It was winter then, moons after his departure from Fódlan and moons before the wedding at Garreg Mach. 

The Palace of Derdriu was fully intact. The personal wings of the former Riegan family were emptied by her orders until morning light. The window was sheathed in frost and the moonlight came through in fractals over their bodies. The edged patterns of light carved into the warm tones of his skin. She'd only seen the likes of it mimicked in cracked glass and once broken windows clumsily repaired. It made it easier for her vision to tunnel in on him, herself, on them. 

She could forget about the tapestry of the Crest of Flames that hung on the wall behind her. She could forget they were in an intricately carved four post bed lined with stags for protection and the blessings of fertility. She could forget the curtain hung above them and around them was made of the sleekest Almyran silk money could buy - a congratulatory gift from King Khalid III Al-Kir. 

Khalid Al-Kir who had sent 40 horsemen over the throat just to deliver a message. It was a show, she knew, of Almyran might; it was proof Khalid the Unifier - as his people had taken to calling him - could spare 40 of his best men just to greet a potential bride. It was to show off the greatest members of the Almyran horse breed with their athletic builds and beautiful, shiny coats, their bold temperaments and clever minds. They had carried gold and jewels to adorn her with and tempting promises of currency, land, power, technology and enough food to share amongst the entire fumbling new nation. 

Khalid Al-Kir had hid amongst his own ranks arriving in the crisp Fódlan morning. He'd climbed through her window and grabbed for her in desperation that bordered on hunger when night fell. He kissed her and sighed like a parched man tasting water on his tongue. He coached her in how to hold his name once more in her lips. 

Khalid was not the name he wanted her to call. 

"Claude?" she asked after him. She had teetered too close to sleep for his question to pass through a ready ear. 

When she raised her head from his chest and blinked slow with heavy lids he pressed a kiss to her brow. 

"Did I wake you with questions, my dear?" he whispered. "I'm sorry. It's too late at night for me to play the philosopher."

Her cheek fell back to his chest. Her fingers curled in the trimmed hair making a line from his navel. He was warm and soft and well-kept beneath her touch. She wondered how difficult that had been to maintain on the road for two weeks of travel through mountainous terrain, all so he could present himself as a welcome addition to her quarters. She would have had him even had he been shaggy, coarse and coated in mud. But she supposed he didn't need to know that. She enjoyed the efforts he made for their own sake. 

"I was awake," she told him. "But barely. What did you ask?"

“Can she hear us?” he asked again. “That goddess of yours, sitting in your head.”

“She heard you before,” she answered, for she could not be sure then, but she had been once. “She had thoughts on you - many thoughts, too many to keep to herself.”

“What kind of thoughts did she have on me?” 

“They were much like my own,” she told him. “She thought your smile was handsome but dishonest. She was curious about you - though she was curious about most things. She did think you took far too many liberties with my maiden heart.”

“What of my maiden heart? No regard for how you toyed with me?” he chuckled and adjusted her against his side so she laid closer still. “She heard our prayers that night in the Goddess Tower?”

Byleth nods. Another kiss, now atop her head. 

“If I pray now to stay with you will Sothis make it so?” he asked. “Will she bring some calamity to keep me by your side?”

“Her will is mine,” Byleth said. “She told me so before.”

He hummed thoughtfully, then breathed deeply. She rose and fell on his chest.

She could feel the sound on his lips. It traveled, a shiver from the crown of her head where his kiss lingered to the tips of her toes. It moved through her as a vibration does through his bowstring, wound taut. He traced his fingers down her spine, where he felt her muscle roll beneath his hand. He smiled into her hair. 

“What’s your will then?” he asked. 

“I want…” her cheeks warm. 

He had her hand promised in marriage. He was advancing by his political moniker rapidly towards a betrothal as a King to a Queen. He killed for her. At times - she remembered the light going from his eyes more often than she could bare to admit before turning back the flow of time - he died for her. He had been inside her and around her. He had known her mind and soul before any living being ever had the chance.

Still, this is what made her blush: the rare, straight forward expression of her deepest desires. “I want you to stay.”

“I’ll stay then. I’ll find a way to extend our talks the week instead of the day,” he brought her so close she could not help but drape all herself over him. His arms wrapped tight around her. “After all, it would be the height of irresponsibility to ignore the fact that Sothis could call some blight upon the world if I depart too soon.”

She smiled, muffled her laughter in his shoulder. “It’s the noble, pious thing to do.”

“Truly, I am a hero,” he brought his arm behind his head and reclined lazily into his hand. “I am doing Lorenz proud.”

Claude had hung a week on the wire of the name he would take once he was crowned her King, and the name Byleth would take in turn. They had spoken of the matter privately in letters and come to an agreement. 

He would go by his chosen name of Claude, keeps his landed name in Fódlan and add the dynastic name from Almyra. Byleth would keep her maiden name and also add the Almyran dynastic name. All their children would be named as their mother was: Eisner Al-Kir. 

But the lords and ladies did not know this. 

Claude drafted a letter for Nader to read aloud, falsely backdated to hide his presence from the court. It suggested that, as opposed to choosing either his birth name, Khalid, or his Fódlan name as his official epithet as King, he might take the chosen name Khallaude or Clalid. It also suggested that, as opposed to keeping their family names from Fódlan and each adding Al-Kir, that they be referred to as Eisner Al-Kir von Riegan von Sothis exclusively, on pain of death. 

Lorenz, upon hearing this, was not so proud as Claude had anticipated, even when he brought forth his duty as a husband, as a noble and as a pious hero of the people.

Byleth remembers this conversation. 

She remembers the warm touch of his skin and his mouth wandering on a whim with her blessing as he flies miles above her head. She remembers the smell of the oil he dabbed at his throat every morning without fail - saffron and pine - even as the mountain’s own pines fall as a carpet at her feet below the cliff. She remembers the music of promise in his voice. 

Magali begins her descent. Her shadow casts wide over the cliffside and drops whatever warmth night, morning and Claude had brought her. 

It is hard for her to determine who dismounts.

The man does not curb his affections, even as two boys from the village far below scamper towards Claude to take the halter from him, then the saddle as he removes that. 

"My love! Too cold in the lodge?"

Magali shakes, muscles jumping visibly beneath scale where the man's contraptions had held her. An orangish red drips from her fangs, diluted and watery. Had she hunted or fought too hard at the bit?

Would he fly her if she had struggled so very much? She'd known the answer to be no once. 

"Starlight!" he calls again. "Is something the matter?"

He has dispensed with the tack and left it to the boys, running off towards the stables. 

She watches him shift - heel and toe, left then right, lover and husband - as he approaches. The motion makes her sick.

"I needed to see you," Byleth says. 

And it's true. She agrees. But it is more pleading a tone than she would give the words. 

Byleth can't muster the energy to care.

He hums. "So eager."

She wants him, she realizes. She wanted him in her bed last night and she wants him now again. 

Fool.

Byleth is tired and so she curls her arms round his neck. She kisses languidly along his jaw. 

There is so much unknown. So much that, even were she to ask, she could not be sure of. But there is one thing she may know. Something she can confirm and be certain of lies in his grasp even now. 

Was making love to his shaken wife what he ought to do? Was it nobility that should lead him to take his princess, piety that he should please his Queen? Was he a hero averting blights upon the world when he made the goddess scream his name rather than letting her plagues sweep across his nation?

Does he want her still, even as there is no parchment lying beneath her head? Even as her wrath does not threaten him, in all her power and glory. 

"Tell me," he whispers husky in her ear. "Has the Queen come for a pleasure ride?"

He does.

…

Byleth is atop him. 

She cannot remember the last time she had been with him this way for anything but fast and convenient relief. But he promised her a ride and that is what she will be given. 

Habit has her bouncing, frantic and reaching.

When last she was astride him it was on a war table, yes? The time before that was in a tent. Before that they had been drunk and rolled about in the hay on their wedding night. Claude had made a comment about the King of Fódlan consummating his marriage the same way a inexperienced village boy loses his virginity. They'd both laughed.

She remembered it fondly but forgot how her back and chest ached with the weight of her bare breasts each time. Unsupported they are heavy. 

She gasps with the effort to stay apace when she is so sore. She grasps at her bosom to support the weight, hands leaving their bracing position on his chest. In this motion her hips stutter without the balance and he hits her awkwardly inside. 

Byleth hisses. 

"Less a pleasure ride, more a gallop," he says. He isn't laughing but he does smile. "No need to rush."

He takes her by the hip with one hand and holds her against him, grinding as best he can. With the other he traces the line of her lips with his finger before sinking it into her mouth. 

"Suck."

Byleth does as he says. She keeps a careful eye on the bob of his throat as he watches. He pulls himself from her slowly until his finger tip comes out with a pop. 

She flinches when it wanders down her body to circle at her swollen bud, warm and wet. 

"Is that good?" he asks. 

She finds herself rolling her hips, focusing on the way he pleasures her. "Yes."

"It's about the ride. We're not in any hurry to get where we're going." he says.

Her head falls back as she feels the tip of him roll in rhythm over the sweet spot inside of her just as the pad of his finger flicks playfully over her clit. She sighs. 

"And the view. Every ride needs a good view." 

She's smiling, lashes fluttering as she looks up at the ceiling still. She wonders what she might look like to him. Smiling with his cock inside her, the muscle of her thighs twitching. Flushed and sighing, eyes to the heavens and throat extended. 

Does he think her very wanton? Tempting? Oh, but how could he be tempted by something that is so thoroughly his?

His.

She almost gags. 

Byleth tries to ignore it. Now was not the time to think on that. 

"Please," she whimpers, pushing away at the panic that tries to cloud her mind and crush her lungs. 

"Please?" Claude's voice is softer, less sure. There's an uncertainty she can see in the cloud over his eyes when she looks back to him. 

Byleth starts to rise and fall in her seat. It soothes them both back into the motion of their lovemaking. 

The hand that toys with her comes to rest at her hip. His thumbs rub gentle circles into the curve of her.

She wants him to chase away the fearful voice at the back of her skull. The one that rattles on, makes her nauseous and is so, disturbingly her own. 

"Please. I want to hear your voice," she begs of him instead. 

"Sweet or cruel?" he asks. It comes out hoarse. Even as relaxed as he is beneath her - body tender, soft and pliable - he still feels the strain of it all. She can tell from the twitch of his brow. 

"Sweet," she says. 

She thrills as he readjusts himself, shifting inside her to get leverage for his hips to keep pace. 

"Stunning." he groans. "Beyond stunning. You're the stuff of poetry. My muse. My dream. My stars." 

His.

She grits her teeth, tries again. 

"Cruel," she says. 

She hears his hand come down hard against her bottom much more than she feels it. There's barely a sting, only a tingle to tell her his hand had struck at all.

He always told her there was a trick to that. 

He digs his finger into her backside.

"Your riding posture is shit."

She barks a laugh.

Her back is arching as his hips nudge her into a steady speed. They go faster, first by beats, before what was a march becomes a canter. Then back to a gallop. 

The ride is bumpy again. But Claude's hands move graciously to her bosom, groping and holding so they don't make her wince like they usually do in this position. 

Byleth's hair swings just below her shoulders. Her hands rest once more on Claude's chest. 

She's close. She can feel it in the way her clit throbs as it hits against the planes of his stomach and the way her insides seem to furl. 

Claude's a moaning mess beneath her. She sees the sweat matting hair to his forehead and feels the frantic clutch of his fingers as he tries not to thrust at random. 

He's doing so well, not breaking pace. She wants to praise him. She wants to lay along his chest, curl her fingers in his hair and tell him how good he makes her feel while he has his way.

"Shodam," he tells her before she gets the chance. "Byleth, shodam." 

Byleth comes off him, lets him flip her onto her back and settle between her knees. He's hard and twitching in his own hand, shaking as he comes closer and closer still. Byleth is still throbbing and cries out when his thumb rubs roughly at her clit, trying his damnedest to finish her. She watches the orgasm tear its way down his spine.

Claude bends down, sucking at her clit until she can follow him over the edge they brought each other to. It doesn't take long for her to quake and call for him, just as he wants. 

There is no doubt in her mind, in the moments following, that he desires her; the flame he keeps for her is yet bright. He whispers love and sweet names in her ear, kisses his slow and sultry between his praises. His hand rests between them, fingering her through her glow until she tenses a second time and must swat him away. 

He rolls onto his back and brings her close to tuck into his side, under his arm. 

"Have you eaten yet?" he asks. 

She shakes her head and feels warm when he chuckles. "Neither have I. I'll call for food."

"Here?" she asks. 

Besides the time she had spent alone in their quarters they had always taken meals somewhere else: usually the gardens, sometimes the lounge. 

"If you like," he says. "I hoped we might spend the day in together."

Half her mind has not caught up to the possibilities. It warms and flitters about like an enamoured child's as she thinks of love and flowery words. The other half wonders what Claude might give away, sated and drowsy. 

"We can eat, drink, read, sleep, fuck, whatever you like," he turns to face her, sunlight refracting off the flecks of gold in his deep green eyes. "Waste a day with me."

And so she does. 

He calls for all their favourite food. He uncorks a fresh bottle of a sweet wine she likes from the southeast of Adrestia and makes sure she gets her fill. He bundles her in his hunting jacket and lays with her on the fur spread on their bed. He is careful with her when they kiss. He asks nothing of her and satisfies her every whim. 

Hours pass as such and shame rises in her chest. Is this really what she wanted? Her husband a traitor, her sovereignty stripped from her, her people under the thumb of a court that had turned their backs on her and she is placated by some wine and sex. How weak she had grown to need confirmation of her husband's continued affections before answers or action. 

Claude is on his third cup of mulled wine for the day. He sits on the bed, back against the headboard. He is flushed and contented, in a pair of soft breeches and a loose white shirt with the neck hanging open. He has a book open in his lap but for the last quarter hour has been glancing up to watch her nibble at a tray of cheeses and sip at her own drink on the end of the bed. 

She lets slip his jacket from around her small frame, one shoulder peeking out at him. As she suspects her husband stares unabashedly. 

She has his attention.

"I went to the library yesterday," Byleth tells him. 

She waits.

Claude puts the book aside on the table but says nothing. He is still all smiles. 

"Do you know what I found?" she asks. 

She smiles over her bare shoulder at him and, evidently, it is inviting. He draws closer until he can wrap his arms around her waist and pull her into his lap. 

"A mess," he guesses. 

It was not the answer she had hoped for. 

"I did find that," she tries to keep her voice light, tries to play with him. 

Because surely that's what this is, some grand game of Claude's. And surely he will let her in on it given the chance and if she plays nicely. He must. It is as it has always been. 

Claude kisses the side of her neck, the slope of her shoulder and hums into her. His beard will leave rough pink marks against her skin, she knows. 

"It's well stocked," she says. "Just as you promised." 

His teeth graze at exposed flesh that has gone soft with disuse after years of peace. He likes to grab the softened bits of her, she noticed long ago, likes to tease at places where she's once been strong. 

She shudders. 

He pulls her back tight against his chest. He still trains like he will need to kill again any day now. 

"I found a book there," she speaks rather than screams like she wishes. "Blue leather, an archer on the bindings. It reminded me of the constellation you showed me."

He stops. 

His grip loosens and her skin, though pink and raw, is free of his efforts. 

When he looks up at her it is with an expression she can place; he has realized something. But Claude's eyes still sparkle and his brow does not knit. He is playful as he had been when he joked of his messes or when he'd lain with her in the morning. 

Something sings in the cage of her ribs. 

"I think I know the book you mean," he says smiling. "Is it in Almyran?"

She laughs. It can not be so bad. He is smiling. It can not be so bad. "Yes!"

"Of course!" he laughs with her. He always laughs with her. "If you wanted to learn Almyran you need only ask me to teach you."

Byleth had not realized it was hope perched on her ribs until he'd shot it down. That little songbird stood not a chance against his tricky arrows. 

"Oh?"

She wants desperately for him to say something else. To tell her of the letter hidden there, to acknowledge it, to explain it. But he does no such thing. 

"I'll teach you all my favourite phrases first," he chuckles. "I'll warn you though, they're not for use in polite society."

Byleth is tired. Suddenly very tired.

She sits up, pushing Claude's arms away so that she can pull off his jackets and toss it to the floor. She lies back against his chest, and his arms envelope her with more care this time as she sighs. 

He presses kisses into the top of her head. 

Byleth closes her eyes. 

"Has there been any word since we've arrived?" She asks. 

"I was very specific in my instructions," he says. "We are not to hear a peep unless the world is ending."

It wasn't an answer. 

"Has there been any word since we've arrived?" She asks again. 

"No."

He isn't lying. Perhaps he'd gotten it while on the road? Or before they left?

She changes the question. "Any word from Seteth at all?"

She feels his heart pound rapid against his chest. "There hasn't been word since we've arrived, my love."

Another non-answer. 

She tilts her head back, looks him in the eye. He's smiling. It's the smile he wore the day they first met: diplomatic, careful, not meeting his eyes. 

"Any word from Seteth at all," she repeats. She hopes he sees that she is begging him. 

"No."

"Thank you, husband,” she leans up and sets a kiss to his cheek. “You’ve put my mind at ease.”

…

She misses Leonie, she tells her husband. She misses her dearly. There is so little family she has left in this world and so little time to spend with them. 

“Am I not your family?” he asks. “Do you not have time with me?” 

The despair and worry in him is just as she willed it to be. 

It does not take much for Byleth to weep when she invokes Jeralt’s name. It takes less for Byleth to wail when she speaks of her. The babe. The babe she remembers clearly. Birthed in ash, blood and soil, crying for battle with her first breath, she was a warrior from the Beginning. Her little fighter. 

Her husband whispers her name. No, Byleth is not even sure he has said it aloud for fear of raising shadows. But the shape, that sits heavy on his lips. 

“We really shouldn’t send from the lodge,” he tells her. “Nothing but trouble can come if messengers are traced from this place - It’s always been secret - but Kupala is not far. I can have a letter sent from there.”

She lets him hold her, lets him believe it is his hand rubbing circles on her back and his rocking with her in his lap that has stopped her weeping. It is exhaustion, however, that keeps her from flooding the mountains. 

Even with a weight in her bones that threatens to send her into another week long spell of slumber, she manages to write to Leonie. 

“Dearest Sister,” begins it. “Your debt to Jeralt is well and truly paid but still I must beg a favour of you.”

She keeps it at her side, night and day, sealed. She digs her long nails into her palm to keep herself awake when her husband sleeps, snoring on his side or breathing clearly on his back. The night before the messenger is to arrive he is on his side, eyes closed facing her, not making a sound. The whole night long he pretends to sleep. 

He did this often after his return to Derdriu, after the wedding. It was to keep the nightmare away without the frantic pacing that worried her. She wonders if this habit has returned. He still wakes some nights in a cold sweat, still leaves the bed to wretch away images of blood soaked earth. 

“Corpses,” he’d described to her once, shaking and feverish. “Hung by their innards. Faces I know. El...Oh, El. I see her shredded in the streets of Enbarr. They carved your crest into half of her and Seiros’ in the other. They make me sew her back together, Byleth. Stitch-by-stitch-by-stitch. And Dimitri, he-”

Claude could not go on when he thought of Dimitri. It was the only time he’d ever tried to tell her of his dreams. 

As she waits for her husband to reach a rest that never comes she tears open her palms and has to hide the moon shaped cuts from her husband in the morning. She cannot risk this letter disappearing as Seteth’s had. 

When the messenger arrives she passes it straight to him and watches him disappear into the mountains. She watches the sky the rest of the day. No wyvern is sent after him. 

She walks the garden with her husband in the afternoon. 

“Have you felt in better spirits since you’ve written to Leonie?” he asks her. “I’ve always found writing down how I feel helps, even if it’s to no one.”

“Leonie is not no one,” she says. 

Her husband shrugs. “I was speaking of my poetry, not Leonie and your letter.”

“I have felt a great deal better,” she tells him. A solid strategy always made a beast of any nature seem less frightening. “What about you and your troubles? Has Magali been feeling better?”

“She was improving for a couple days,” something of Claude dances in the corner of her vision as she walks, eyes still on the clear blue expanse above. “But yesterday she snapped her bit.”

Byleth’s eyes widen. She looks to her side, interest having been piqued. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“Riding a wyvern is different than riding a horse,” he says. “From a horse you need compliance, willingness. Wyvern’s must want to fly if you’re going to get anywhere.”

“So you’ve said,” the image of Magali biting through her sweet iron bit sinks in. Then comes the thought of her flailing with her rider having no grip to hold her steady in the air. He falls. “When did this happen?”

“On the ground while we were tacking her up,” he answers. 

Byleth raises her chin to peck her lips against his jaw. Then her eyes wander back to the sky. 

“Please don’t fly for a little while,” she asks of him. “I couldn’t bear to lose you too.”

Even looking away she can see the grief in his smile. “Nor I you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm sure you guys have FEELINGS! I know I did writing this. 
> 
> Please, feel free to share!


	3. to please Almyra's princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows grief. She knows what it is to beat at her chest and cry to the empty heavens. She knows what it is to hold warm skin in her arms and feel it go cold beneath her touch. She knows what nightmares come with it, what sorrow it lays at her feet, blocking the path she is already too weary to walk. This is not like it. 
> 
> It is less a pain and more a restlessness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a chapter for you! Tried to pack it full of as much fluff as I could while maintaining the tone and keeping the momentum going. 
> 
> Once again that you to [evil_bunny_king](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king) who is wonderous and always the best at advice and editing. Check 'em out!
> 
> Hope you enjoy the read!

Leonie is loyal and steadfast and bold. This is how Byleth knows no reply will come. All is in motion miles away and her hands are free from the dirt of it. All that needs to be is and Byleth can feel content with this. She should feel content with this. So why is she not?

She considers, for a time, that it might be her mind. Her heart still aches soundlessly, her breath still seizes. She still looks into the eyes of a stranger in her mirror and a different stranger in her bed. And when she is quiet, still and herself - in flesh and in spirit - she weeps for what’s lost and hides from Claude and his comforts. It would not be so far a conclusion to reach that there is something internal that causes her unease. 

But it is different, she thinks. She knows grief. She knows what it is to beat at her chest and cry to the empty heavens. She knows what it is to hold warm skin in her arms and feel it go cold beneath her touch. She knows what nightmares come with it, what sorrow it lays at her feet, blocking the path she is already too weary to walk. This is not like it. 

It is less a pain and more a restlessness. 

The thought that she may be wanting again crosses her. It seems odd, at first. She has never wanted him when the distance was so large and her psyche so rattled. But it is an avenue worth exploring. 

She is not averse to him, or to his body at the very least. It is nice and reminds her of someone she loves deeply in her thrumming veins. If she lets herself she might even forget he is a traitorous snake slithering between her legs. She might close her eyes, see Claude's loving gaze above her, and open them to remind herself those eyes are the same, set in the same skull. 

She tries one night, when the moon is high and her husband's back is turned to her. He's snoring and she does not think she is drowsy enough to sleep through it. So instead she puts her arms around his waist and whispers in his ear until he wakes. 

It is a slow effort, to get him roused. 

He lays on his back, more confused than anything as Byleth grasps at him and asks that he do the same. His fingers are inside her, hitting all the right places. And in theory she should be feeling something. In theory he should be getting harder in her hand. But she doesn't and he isn't. They fumble like that a while longer until he swats her hand away from him. 

"It's not happening," he tells her, fatigue and frustration sour his voice. "I can go down on you if you need it."

She is operating entirely on the theoretical. What she knows of this body, what it likes, what it wants, what usually does the trick. And she'd do just about anything to get rid of this something, this nothing that fills and consumes her. 

But it is something tender for him that speaks instead of that desperation. Something as fatigued and frustrated as he makes a sound and kisses his lips with a hum. 

"It's alright," Byleth tells him. "Hold me?"

He does just that and it is comforting to hear him snore in her ear this time. At least she can be sure one of them is getting sleep. 

…

Come morning the restless feeling is still there. 

She thinks maybe to try a different approach. When Claude holds her she leans in. When he speaks to her she returns his words with little nods and noises to let him know he’s heard. When he brings her a warm robe with a fur trim she wears it without complaint. 

“You’ve been cold,” he says. She does not think it is innuendo. Then again she is never sure; it was someone else’s area of expertise. “There’s a furrier in the town below. His work is handsome. Perhaps I can call him for you? You could try on a few pieces and see if there are any you like?”

She does not realize why he, so interested in solitude with his wife, would suggest such a thing based on the trim of a robe he had put her in. She entertains the thought that it is the frivolity of a King thinking his consort pretty in furr. 

She sinks into something else, a part quite convinced of the logic to his actions. A part that has a crystalized form of her body in its mind and that etches his name to the back of her eyes like a reminder. 

That is the part that notices she is walking arm-in-arm with Claude down the stairs. Byleth sees that his face is blooming in a way that it hasn’t since they last made love. It hears the larks exchanging whimsical songs. It is morning and she has emerged from their room at his side, dressed and going to take breakfast on time. 

It has been a long time since a morning has had such a normalcy to it. So lost in thoughts of chasing away the itch - coiled between sinews of muscle, nagging that something must be amiss - was she that she’d not noticed that he’d worked her through the mornings as they used to be. They were broken still, those early days, but together and still working at picking up pieces.  
That his desperation was so vast he would cling even to the change of coat lining to see if he could heal her with it was worrying to Byleth. Her poor Claude, her poor lover. What were they doing to each other?

“Only if you’ll buy something to match,” Byleth says, as they descend the last step. “And a spread for the bed at home. The sea air is chilly at night time.” 

Claude clicks his tongue, ushering her down the hall to the sitting room. She can already smell meat and pastries in bounty. Byleth wonders how many mornings he'd prepared a meal for two in hopes he could coax her towards it. He won with tea many a time but mornings were a battle he often did not fight for. 

"Your father's Faerghus blood thins in you, my love," he shakes his head, as though this were some great loss to the honour of them both. "I married you to ensure my children might never be cold. It seems I might have chosen some other northern lady."

He jokes but the image rises from her. Byleth tries to ignore it. 

"We'll have to commission something for the baby," she says. "A coat, a blanket, maybe something to carry her with. I don't understand how something so small and dainty could survive even a light breeze."

"The baby?" Claude frowns. 

"The baby we'll have one day," Byleth recovers her mind. 

Claude decides to laugh. She sees it cross his eyes as an option before it follows through. "It's a girl you've decided?"

"I'm certain," she tells him. "You'd love a daughter."

Claude releases her arm and stands aside to let her into the sitting room. "I'd love any child by you, starlight."

Byleth is fortunate this hand is her own. It operates at her discretion and so it rises to touch his face, to slide fingers along his jaw. She rewards his filthy, lying, venomous mouth with affection because it is more pleasant than the truth. 

Someone else might have struck him. 

She kisses him softly when she walks past him, those fingers still at his jaw. Byleth will silence him and steal his breath and maybe then she'll be confused enough to call it justice. 

They take their seats in the drawing room. 

She has been here only a few times, when the weather was not accommodating to taking tea outside. Claude did not spend much time here either, she could tell. If he did it would be covered corner-to-corner in his mess.

Claude sits to her right – between herself and the door - his left arm draped over the sofa’s back, his legs crossed casually. Immediately he is pointing to all the sweet things he thinks she’ll like.

There is a meat glazed in spiced honey and another in unaltered syrup from a species of Almyran maple that grows far east. They are diced small enough that Claude can hold one out for Byleth to sample. He smiles at the hum of satisfaction over the tips of his fingers when she bites in.

Next, he piles a collection of greens and cheeses onto a flat bread and offers it up. When she is finished he piles yet more food onto yet more bread – sangak, he calls it – and waits for her to try that as well.

It is endearing, Byleth thinks, the tour he gives her of the table.

“The honey and maple come from the east,” he tells her. “There’s a valley there that holds the lushest soil on the continent. The bees love it there; that’s what makes their honey the sweetest, or so I hear. Then the wheat for the sangak is from Nader in southwestern plains." 

He goes on and Byleth finds herself listening quite intently. Rarely does her husband speak of his country in such detail. But Claude is careful, intricate, weaving thread by thread together until he has created so beautiful a tapestry of the land that she might never look away.

“Will I see it someday?” she asks.

“Will you see what, my love?” he is gathering up the porcelain to pour another cup of tea for her.

“Your Almyra," she sweeps her hand over the table as though their lavish breakfast is a map. She supposes it is one, of sorts. "When will I see the valley to the east and the plains in the southwest. I've seen only the mountains and the desert so far."

His eyes dart up quickly, as though he is looking back into his skull to see what fabrication he has prepared for her.

That sense of unease, itching over the folds of her mind is suddenly remembered. Distractions of banter and breakfast, even betrayals and chasms too deep to fathom fall from her shoulders, too heavy to carry. 

Byleth places her hand on his knee and he breathes again. She had not realized he was not before. 

"I could tell you that I will," he says. 

Claude's hand covers hers on his knee; she is reminded of how big it is. He turns his body to face her, parallel and open. His other hand moves from the back of the chair to caress her cheek.

"I could tell you that it is not the time now or that the politics are messy," he says. "But really, I'm just worried you'll be unhappy."

It is like the floor has rushed up to meet her feet. His words ring true, unfiltered. For just a moment she is sure, completely and entirely sure, that there is nothing behind his words she need find. The ground is firm beneath her and she can walk again. 

"Why?" Byleth asks. "Why would you think I'd be unhappy?"

"I know your position is..." he looks for the word with care, "reduced here. I know that is a delicate subject. I want you to be happy, Byleth."

"I am," she lies. 

Byleth kisses his softly on his lower lip, holding against him there. The stubble on his chin scratches her a little and his lips are soft and full as ever. 

Byleth remembers the first time she kissed his lips as well as she recalls the pattern of stars in the sky and tearing from her skirt to wrap linen around a creature tender and fearsome in equal parts. 

The unease is gone. It leaves as her fingers fall to the diving neck of his shirt. As they trace a line over his heart. Trim curls of hair beneath her touch, heated skin beneath that, then hard muscle. All cover his beating heart, which slows as she drifts into his body. 

Byleth shifts to sit on his knee, to rest her head on the crook of his neck to lay both hands on Claude's chest and feel him melting beneath her. 

She can almost believe she has spoken true. The unease is lifting. She was not the only one who had been feeling it.

"One day things will be better," he says. "I know there's more than just Almyra that weighs on you but one thing at a time. I'll make you Queen in Almyra as soon as I'm able. It will help, won't it?"

"It will," she lies again. 

"Then you'll be able to see it. We'll have a tour for the new Queen," he smiles. "I can make it better, all of it. Whatever you need, I'll manage. Do you trust me?"

"Yes." 

He sighs and wraps his arms around her. Byleth is not sure who she is lying to but she feels better. 

…

Claude's schemes have ceased for the time being. She waits for his next move but none comes. Byleth can be contented with that in the coming months. 

Now that he is settled some from their talk and she has engaged that in her mind which is still solid, she can focus all her efforts on keeping him from the edge. She suspects he is trying to do the same. 

While her letter is off - no doubt on the road to Derdriu - to do it's work, Claude busies himself with all the romantics a honeymoon calls for. 

Just as Claude suggested, the furrier is brought in. Byleth is given pelts to run her fingers through, all while the artisan praises the princess’ fine and elegant taste. 

Claude pours spiced wine for himself and for her. It is a heady blend of spirits, her husband's hold around her waist, the furriers feeding of her ego and the luxury of the goods on display that makes her head spin. Hedonism, she thinks the word was. 

She can imagine her scowl seeing Byleth engaged in such things. Byleth giggles.

"What do you think of a white wolf pelt?" she asks, waving her hand for the furrier to hold it out for her once more. 

"I think it's stunning," he tells her. "What do you think of a shawl and muffs made from it?"

She shakes her head. "Too delicate. A whole coat will do just fine."

"And leave your hands cold," he teases, turning her palms up and kissing them. 

"Mittens from a white rabbit then," she says. "Something to match."

"We have plenty of hides in town that will suit the princess's wishes," the furrier tells Claude, jovial and nearly hopping in place. 

"A coat and mittens it is, then. Name your price, sir."

Claude pays what the furrier asks and more for the trouble of bringing his wares. By the end of the day they have commissioned Byleth's own items and a cloak to be made from a grey wolf for Claude. 

This is not where his efforts end, however. 

One day, when the sun blesses the mountains with a temperate day, Byleth dresses in the lightest chemise she owns. No corsets, robes or overcoats adorn her. Only a sheer cream fabric floating down to her ankles that drapes over her entirely unsecured. 

Her husband has the gardens cleared for them to walk without scandal. For the day none but them may enter. 

The chemise falls from one shoulder as she leans back, settling her head on Claude's lap. She looks up at him; his hair looks almost brown with the halo of the sun behind him, even as the ironwood branches sway above them. 

Another day he plies her with stories - mythic, fabled and true - in the mess of the library. Evidence of his work is scattered about but he does nothing but read his favourite stories and passages of poetry to her. Or he listens, enthralled, when she reads to him. 

"I always liked the tales of nomads when I was a child," he tells Byleth. 

"The tales told by nomads or about them?" she asks. 

"Both," he grins. 

So the days pass. It has been weeks of this. Her lie becomes a little more true every day. Grief sits at the bottom of her lungs threatening to liquify, to expand, to drown her. But for now she has Claude and she has her name and her body and few interjections of anything else. And so she is well. 

With the next setting of the sun Claude holds his hand out to her. "May I take you to bed?"

She takes his hand and they retire early to their quarters. 

Claude unlaces her dress and her corset, unpins the layer of her hair plaited upwards. He kneels to slip her shoes from her feet and to roll her stockings down the supple shape of her thigh.

She shivers.

His lips kiss up the columns of her legs until his head is beneath her underskirt and his tongue is inside her.

He combs through her nerves for hours, untangling every sore, tender ache that was knotted into her. And when they are on the bed, done - when he has finished and is cleaning himself from her and promising tea to ease her mind after releasing inside her - she feels refreshed. 

She is slick with sweat, warm inside. His seed is dripping from her, despite his best efforts to clean her up. Claude is smiling unrestrained. Their legs twine together, dancing slow in an odd kind of friction she has missed having. 

He has not come to her with his desire in so long. He waits, patient and desperate, to receive hers. To be the object of his love, his lust is a potent drug. 

It has not been like this since -

She smells brimstone and burning copper.

"It wasn't like this before," she says. 

Her husband's nose touches hers, before he shakes his head, the tips kissing in a gesture that is suddenly unfamiliar to her. 

She feels she has woken from the sensation of falling, like she is to hit the ground any second now. 

"What wasn't like what when now?" he laughs. 

He is tangled in her, caught up in her. Euphoria still tingles behind his eyes like it had behind hers. He has not seen, not heard, not noticed. 

"I remember it, Claude," she says. "It wasn't like this before. Building bodies, making life. It was different."

He yawns. "Was it?"

She is not sure what she wants his reaction to be: fear, pensiveness, awe.

Curiosity, a part suggests. He was a creature of questions after all.

Instead he seems completely and utterly steadfast, holding to the pleasure he begot like a child grasps a worn old blanket. 

She sits up. She feels a burning between her legs, a cut on a palm that lies beneath the ground. 

Her husband's knuckles brush up and down her spine without a care in the world. 

"I was different," she says. "Not like I am."

"I think I much prefer building bodies this way," he says.

She looks over her shoulder at him. His lashes flutter and he seems entirely unconcerned, like they have had this conversation a million times before. 

What else he likes better goes uncommented on. 

"Come out of the past, Byleth. You'll feel better," he says, patting the space beside him on the bed. "Lay with me."

She does not miss the innuendo this time, and she is sure that's what it is. But the name he uses is a comfort so she goes back to him. They tangle again as Magali calls restlessly over the mountain range and the wind beats against the window. 

The bed creaks, flesh slaps wet against flesh. The head board has made a mark in the paint on the wall that they'll worry about another day. His groans are heady. He makes her moan. 

When morning comes the lark sings and Byleth is a little more at home in herself. She does feel better.

All that deviated the night before goes unspoken of. There is no other way to build bodies, to make life. There is no other way for her to be. 

Claude makes her a tea from some of his emergency herbal stash, just as he promised, and it is all forgotten. 

She thinks she hears him say something over breakfast that morning and she asks him to repeat it. 

"I lied," he says. 

She knows. But what lie he's referring to is unclear. 

"I hated her," he says. 

Byleth smiles, still sipping on her tea. Ah. That. "I know."

"What she did to you-" Claude looks like he wants to vomit at the mere thought of it. 

Her heart still does not beat but her pulse staggers. "I know."

"I'd do it all again," he says. 

She didn't know that. 

"Still, you love her."

Byleth nods. "I love her."

Claude sighs. "I know."

…

The mountain weather becomes cooler and the leaves begin to dry out around the edges. Their colours have not turned yet but there is no doubt autumn is coming. 

The commission arrives from the furrier, delivered by the artisan himself. Byleth pays him endless compliments on his work. Claude pays him even more in gold. 

Her coat is long, down to her knees. It is pleated twice over the chest and the back to hug closer to her body. The tailoring on it is perfection. Byleth has never felt so entirely fitted into an article of clothing. The mittens too are warm and comfortable. 

She decides to model it for Claude, to bring his humours back to where she kept them so carefully. It is not so long until they are to return to Derdriu. If her plans fail then they shall move court again to the Almyran capitol, deep in desert land. He will need to be put at ease before then, just as he must keep her so. 

She lays herself out on his desk in the library, bare but for the coat draped around her, his ring on her finger and a string of pink pearls he gifted her many moons ago that reached all the way down to her navel. 

He is easy to tempt. It is predictable really. His mood improves greatly in the days after. 

If she remembers anything more she keeps it to herself. 

If he thinks of what they spoke of before so does he. 

She tries to enjoy herself while she keeps him satisfied and pliant. It does not take much. She need only indulge herself with whatever he offers and he seems to be soothed. 

Byleth shudders to think that he believes her wounds his to heal, her pain his personal failings as her friend and her lover. 

But then he kisses her concerns away and pries her so sweetly from the past that she cannot help but follow him down the lethean path he's chosen for them. 

When a retinue of guards arrive from Goneril territory they begin to prepare their departure.

Byleth packs away all she came with and all she has acquired during her stay. 

Claude approaches her with two brown paper parcels - stacked one atop the other and tied together with string - when she is packing away the new fur in an empty carrying crate she had bought for just such cases. (Those "cases" being her husband's spontaneous gifting habits.)

"Here," he leaves the parcels on the bed. 

His throat bobs with a nervous gulp and she raises a brow at the gifts. 

"They're just as you asked for," he tells her. "A coat, a blanket. And this is a wrap with fur lining to keep her close to our chest. It's adjustable; either of us can wear it."

Byleth's eyes go wide when she remembers her request. They're for a baby, just as she had asked while her head floated about somewhere else. 

"Listen to me, Byleth," he says, taking her hand in both of his. "Things will change when we return to Derdriu. It may not all be good, but I promise, it is for the best."

She knows what he speaks of, what she read in the letter. She cannot tell whether he thinks her too feeble in mind to recall the truth of it, the reality that was his letter from Seteth. 

"I think, though, that this has been good for us," Claude gestures between them. "I don't want this to change. I love you, and I want you to know I have your best interest at heart."

She's concerned over the habit she has made of telling this lie, this exact lie to him. It is the most heinous one she thinks she has told. Yet she must do it, for Claude is more right than he knows about Derdriu, about change. 

"I trust you," she says. 

He seems relieved. He holds her to his chest and she realizes it is because he needs to be held, not that he thinks she does. 

"I love you," she whispers truth into his ear. She hopes he can believe that. 

Byleth feels his smile against her shoulder. "We'll have that daughter someday."

"Someday," she agrees. 

For tonight they have each other. Tomorrow they have the open road. After that, after that they have a someday. Byleth prays to a heaven she knows to be empty that someday is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys! Hope you enjoyed. 
> 
> Lots of feelings, I'm sure. Feel free to put the good, the bad and the ugly right down there in the comments. if not I hope you had a good read.
> 
> Stay safe during this pandemic, everyone! And thank you to any front liners or fellow retail folks out there.

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's a ride.
> 
> Thoughts, feeling and theories are all welcome in the comments down below! If you couldn't tell I am super amped about this particular piece because it's kinda a passion project for me. 
> 
> I hope you guys had a good read and thank you so much!
> 
> If you like my work and want to see more feel free to check out my tumblr


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